Heart of Gold (8 page)

“I’ll do that.” He glanced toward the door. “May I go in to her now?”

“Of course. Just don’t stay too long. You don’t want to overtire her.”

“No. I won’t.”

“Send for me if you need me.” Dr. Featherhill put on his hat.

“I will.”

Matthew waited until the doctor started down the staircase before he walked to Alice’s room and opened the door. She lay with her back toward him, and he wondered if she was asleep.

She wasn’t. “I’m sorry, Matt.” She rolled onto her back and looked toward him.

“What for? You can’t help that you’re sick.” He walked to the bedside and took her hand in his.

“I . . . I should have told you what was wrong with me before I came. I guess I hoped for a miracle, that I wouldn’t ever have to tell you, that I would be able to live and watch my son grow to manhood. That’s what I’ve prayed for.”

“Maybe the doctor’s wrong.”

Her smile was a pale shadow of the kind he remembered when they were kids. “He’s not wrong.”

“Alice, I should have been there for you. All these years without seeing you . . . I should have sent for you after Edward died. You shouldn’t have been alone all this time.”

“It isn’t your fault we haven’t been closer. I married and moved away. That was my choice, Matt. Your place was in the West. I always understood that.”

Their brief conversation had taxed Alice’s limited energy. Her breathing seemed more labored, the circles beneath her eyes darker. Better to leave so she could rest, he decided. They could talk more later.

But for how much longer? How many opportunities would he have to get to know his sister better? Not many. A few months, the doctor had said.

He leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Rest, Alice. I’ll check back on you in a short while.”

“We need to talk . . . about Todd.”

“I know, but it can wait for now. You need to sleep.”

“We can’t wait long.”

Strange, the pain those words caused him. He’d given his younger sister so little thought through the years. He’d known she was married and cared for by her husband, and there had always been “someday.”

Someday he would go visit her in Wisconsin. Someday he would write more often. Someday . . .

God, why? I don’t understand why she has to die. Better if it were me. I don’t have a child to raise
.

Only it looked like he would have one to raise soon.

Sun Jie cleared the table after lunch and put the dishes into the wash pan.

“Thank you, Sun Jie,” Shannon’s father said. “It was delicious.”

Before the housekeeper could respond, there was a knock upon the door.

“I’ll get it, Father.” Shannon crossed the room and opened it. Her gaze lowered to the boy on the porch. “Well, hello, Todd. Have you followed another puppy to our woodpile?” She smiled as she asked the question.

“No, ma’am.” He shook his head. “Uncle Matt told me to come for the reverend. Asked if he could come to our house.” His expression was, she realized now, forlorn. “I think it’s about my ma.”

“What about your mother?”

“She’s sick.”

Shannon turned. “Father.”

“Yes?”

“You’re needed at the Dubois home.”

The reverend came to stand beside her.

“This is Todd Jackson. You met him and his mother at church last Sunday. He says his mother is sick, and his uncle, Mr. Dubois, has requested that you come to their house.”

“Then I shall go straightaway.”

Something about the small boy’s expression tugged at Shannon’s heart. “If it’s all right, I’ll join you, Father.”

“Of course it’s all right. Let me get my Bible, and we’ll go at once.”

A short while later, Shannon and her father followed Todd along a narrow street that climbed the hillside. Ahead of them and to the right, she could see several two-story homes that were a cut above anything else she’d seen in the town. Although not overly large, they had been designed and built with care, unlike the many shacks elsewhere in Grand Coeur that seemed to have been thrown together with whatever materials were available at the time.

“That’s our house,” Todd said, pointing to one of the homes she’d been looking at.

The news surprised her. Matthew Dubois hadn’t seemed to be a man of either influence or money. He was a stagecoach driver, after all. That wasn’t the sort of work that made a man wealthy, was it?

“Judge not, that ye be not judged
.”

How many times had her father quoted those words to her? Too many. Would she ever learn to heed his instructions the first time? Oh, she hoped so. She would love to become as good at heart as her father. She feared God would never work that particular miracle. And it would, indeed, take a miracle to make her as good as her father.

When they arrived at the house, Todd opened the door and ran in ahead of them, calling for his uncle. Shannon and her father waited on the veranda.

“Reverend Adair.” Matthew Dubois stepped into view. “Miss Adair.

Thanks for coming. Please. Come in.”

After his visitors stepped into the entry hall, Matthew took them into the parlor, where he invited them to sit. As soon as they’d done so, Shannon’s father said, “I take it your sister’s condition has worsened.”

“Yes.” Matthew glanced toward the stairs. “The doctor tells me she’s dying.”

Shannon’s breath caught in her throat. Dying? But she was so young. Only a year or two older than Shannon.

“He doesn’t think she’ll last more than a few months.”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Dubois. Would you like me to pray for her?”

“Yes. Of course. But that wasn’t the main reason I sent for you. I’m hoping you might be able to recommend someone—a woman in your congregation, perhaps—who could help care for Alice when I’m at work.

I know you haven’t been here any longer than I have, but I was hoping . . . I thought . . .” His sentence faded into silence, unfinished.

Shannon thought back to the Sunday service. She and Mrs.

Jackson had been two of a handful of women in the church. The only one she’d met thus far was Mrs. Rutherford, but she hardly seemed the right nurse for a dying woman.

“I could do it, Father.”

She saw Matthew’s eyes widen at her suggestion. The look said she was the last woman he would want caring for his sister. She stiffened her spine and tilted her chin.

“I assure you, sir, I’m a good nurse. I’ve spent a great deal of time in the past year helping to care for Confederate soldiers wounded in battle. I’m not squeamish nor given to fainting spells.”

She looked at her father and was rewarded with a small smile.

Then he turned to Matthew. “It seems my daughter would like to help care for your sister, if you’ll allow it. And she is telling the truth. She’s come to be a fine nurse. The physician at the army hospital near our home in Virginia told me so himself.”

“If you’re sure, Miss Adair,” Matthew said after a period of silence.

“I’m sure,” she answered.

“Good.” Her father gave a firm nod. “It’s settled, then. Now, why don’t you show us to Mrs. Jackson’s room.”

The small group climbed the narrow staircase, Shannon bringing up the rear. The door to Matthew’s sister’s bedroom stood open. Inside, the curtains had been drawn, letting in only a small amount of light. Alice Jackson lay on her side. The blanket covering her barely moved as she breathed in and out.

“Alice?” Matthew said softly.

She opened her eyes and sent him a brief smile.

“The reverend and his daughter are here to see you.” He helped her to turn onto her back and sit up slightly with the help of pillows against her back. “Miss Adair has offered to stay with you while I’m at work.”

“Miss Adair.” Alice smiled again, though it didn’t linger on her lips. “I’ve looked forward to meeting you. You played so beautifully at church on Sunday.”

“Thank you.”

Shannon’s father pulled a straight-backed chair close to the bed and sat on it. “I would like to pray for you, Mrs. Jackson. Is that all right?”

Alice nodded, and her eyes closed again. Shannon suspected it wasn’t so much because the reverend was about to pray as because the brief exchange had sapped her strength.

Matthew wasn’t ungrateful for the assistance, but he hadn’t expected Shannon Adair to volunteer to care for Alice. She didn’t seem the type to take care of a woman she’d never met. It surprised him even more to learn that she’d nursed wounded soldiers. He would have expected her to consider herself too good for such pursuits.

He’d obviously misjudged her. Shannon had looked upon Alice with true compassion when they were all upstairs in the bedroom.

Before returning to the Wells, Fargo office, Matthew gave Shannon a quick tour of the house so she would know where to find things, and he passed along the instructions Dr. Featherhill had given him for Alice’s care. In truth, there wasn’t much that could be done for her. The physician had left a tincture of Hawthorn to be taken daily for her heart and, when the time arrived that the pain became too much, laudanum for the cancer.

When Matthew entered the office, William rose from his desk behind the counter. “I was gettin’ worried. What’d the doctor say?”

“It’s not good.” He removed his hat and hung it on a peg near the door. “She’s dying.”

“Oh, Matt. I’m right sorry to hear that news.”

He nodded.

“What’s to become of the boy?”

“I’m not sure.”

“We need to talk . . . about Todd . .
.”

Matthew pictured his sister as her words repeated in his head.

“We can’t wait long
.”

No, they couldn’t wait long. Time was running out. It was written in the pain on her face and could be heard in her labored breathing.

God help me. What will I do about Todd when she’s gone?

7

Alice slept away the first morning Shannon Adair came to care for her. Her body wouldn’t allow her to do anything else. But after a bowl of hot soup for lunch, she was ready to become better acquainted with the pretty young woman from Virginia.

“Tell me about yourself, Miss Adair,” she requested when Shannon returned to the bedroom after taking away the luncheon tray.

Shannon sat on the chair beside the bed. “What would you like to know?”

“Tell me about your family.”

“Father is my only family now. My mother passed away nearly ten years ago. I have no brothers or sisters.”

“I was fifteen when my parents died.”

“And it was just you and your brother after that?”

Alice nodded. “But he left Oregon to find work with the express company. That’s where our farm was. In Oregon Territory. That’s where I met Edward, my husband. After we married, we returned to his hometown in Wisconsin.” Her voice faltered, and she turned her gaze toward the window. “He was killed the first year of the war.”

“Serving the Union?” Something altered in Shannon’s voice.

Alice didn’t have to wonder at the cause of it. It was as if she were looking into her own heart. “You loved someone fighting for the Confederacy, didn’t you? Someone who has died in the war.”